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First album I ever bought: In Search of the Lost Chord.... second? The Yes album. I am suddenly reminded of a lyric, one that I don't think I have heard/recalled for decades, but, on reflection, would seem to have been formative in my thinking. From On the threshold of a Dream: The Inner Voice says: "There you go, man, keep as cool as you can. Face piles of trials with smiles, it only riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave. And keep on thinking free."

Martin Armstrong had a post about the Eurozone today: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/europes-current-economy/europe-how-bad-can-this-get/ Unlike climate, I don't think the scientific consensus is in yet on Brexit, EU, Euro. What does the fifth dentist say? Find out... click, read, learn...

I'm waiting for @VWAP to weigh in on the cougar-campaign before I decide. Or were you asking about the thread, in a clever, self-referential way?

Joseph Lucas, Duke of Darkness, Je t'accuse!

Clean's animal is one we need to be reminded exists. That is a great summary article on a topic I try to remind folks on the Greta thread - actually, everywhere - about... [admission] I totally binge-watched all the initial SailGP events long after, on youtube. Do I get counted in stats?

@Panoramix You are there, in the EU. I lived long ago for a year in the south of France, long before E-anything. I have opinion, you have some local knowledge... that said:

This is something that has always annoyed me. Two consecutive quarters and you are in a Recession. The R word... DK, it is deeper and darker than just that. You refer merely to the quarter-to-quarter mentality. I refer to whether the system blows up under ~sustained contraction. A sound financial system (including gummint debt, banks) shouldn't implode or require dramatic "orchestration" to try to keep it from blowing up merely because, say, the people choose to relax a bit for a few years, and slow down their pace of activity (resulting in contracting GDP, big deal, we want to relax). I think the current system implodes under that condition, which is, whether Greta understands all this or not, the exact condition required for sustainability, IMHO. Not only can we (privileged folks in developed nations) not only not grow, it is quite likely we need to shrink our economic activity, do less, use less, travel less, buy less, etc etc. But stuff some "negative growth" into this system and watch what happens. Now it's just a "not on my watch" kick-the-can game. I will be absolutely amazed if the CAD and USD and Yen and Euro survive me, without being largely supplanted. If we head towards Big Brother always watching with Big AI, all-digital money, bio-implants or scan-ID, mankind is doomed. It will be the death of freedom. And without freedom, our systems cannot be organic, so they will not be sustainable. The root cause of a great deal of our woes is how we have chosen to deal with money and debt. Just IMHO.

I am so sick of "caring" people fucking up the world. Care? Ok. Fine. But wake up and smell the inevitability of evolution and organic processes, then embrace them, please, everyone. Our institutions are inorganic, and they therefore fail us. Here is an interesting question Greta should be asking, and getting people to think about: "What is the most natural and organic way that we can all live together on this planet, so that we have at least a remote chance of it being ~sustainable, and ~stable?" Spoiler alert: it does not involve unfathomably large and influential institutions operating within the economy and environment on our behalf. Embrace organics? Gotta ditch the UN, IPCC, megacorps, BigGuv, debt-money, etc, all about the most inorganic things we could have come up with. Ooops. And we wonder why we find ourselves in conflict with Nature. Um, duh, we fail to follow His/Her rules.

@Panoramix, I am delighted to hear we share some thinking on this extremely complex enviro-economic issue. Maybe there is hope. Yeah, 1) is tough. Folks, and even moreso, institutions don't tend to want to give up "control". Off the topomyhead I actually think the Italians may have the only viable model and way forward: accept and just let the "underground" economy thrive - stop fighting it, let the crippled and dying governments, banks, pensions, etc go bankrupt. A bit tough now that the EU/Euro mistake was made, though... the last thing we you needed was another layer of institutions and bureaucracy that will eventually have to go, but whateva. We all make mistakes. I feel quite strongly that the attempt to "unite" Europe will prove to be its undoing. Alternative currencies will be needed... Keep watching, these things take many years...

Panoramix, I assume you are a sailor, but your analogy is wrong. The reason wood (and fish and...) gets shipped from France (and Canada and...) to other places is that, given our terrible accounting for economic externalities (pollution, enviro-destruction, etc) it is the most cost-effective and efficient way to do it. Economist Jeff Rubin thought petro-scarcity alone would create the new "local economy", but he was dead-wrong on his timing. Efficiency is really important, we need even more of it, and it should be every greenies mantra! BUT: we have to do our best to account and compensate for environmental costs, future generations, etc, and we simply haven't, to-date. The real problems are: 0) our financial systems DEMAND continuous growth. Until we all understand and get over this, and start fixing it, the rest is window-dressing and distraction. It was the one thing Greta said that made good sense. She should have stuck with it... driven it home. Opportunity lost. 1) not that there is no-one trying to control this system, but that there are too many folks trying, and failing miserably; 2) we fail to account monetarily for so much that is of such tremendous importance, our whole value-system is messed up; 3) even where we do try to account for non-monetary stuff, we mess it up badly across space and time; IMHO we are headed (big-picture, long-term) to local-economies, increased local economic diversity (no more one-company "coal towns", etc), and a decrease (relatively speaking) in "insane" global goods-shipping as described above. Think ancient Greece, city-states, etc. I think it's bloody obvious, it's the only sustainable way, so that is what will happen. But our current economic incentive structures do not guide us in that direction. Fix some of the incentives and the rest follows. With no-one at the helm. A sound and well-balanced ship sails itself. Read Joshua Slocum's "Alone Around the World". Learn to appreciate how organic systems are the only ones that are scalable, and good, Panoramix. You are not a wizard with all the right answers... no one has the recipe for the potion we need now, it needs to organically evolve on its own, this elixir.

@d'ranger Please, please repeat until firmly understood: The plural of anecdote is not "data". I wonder if Greta understand this. I think not.

More modern helmets are now mandatory when foiling. Curved foils have been discovered to be more effective in use. See below. Thumbs up for foiling!

Steve, F31#1 here. We (actually, this time First Mate did the dirtywork!) pulled out *everything* sewage-related, and replaced with a bespoke dessicating head. Some off-grid guy in the UK was selling the urine-separator seat, I built the rest as nothing commercial was going to fit. Goog up "urine separator", "dessicating head" etc. There is C-head, and some other commercial marine units. If you are pulling out sewage hose, reconfiguring, IMHO you should at least check out the options. We can now go ~weeks without dumping solids, just the pee. Dry shit doesn't stink, piss seriously does, and the toxic shiss combination, well, you know all about that by now. We probably shook fifty to a hundred pounds off the boat as a side benefit. Second side-benefit: more environmentally friendly. Good luck!

^^^ This. Sawstop guy, meet @Raz'r. @Raz'r, meet Sawstop guy. You two should get along great enforcing everyone's safety upon them, whether they want it or not. @Hatin' life, my bud brought his FJ1200 by long ago, but long after my racing daze (on RD400s). I grabbed all the throttle, in second, I think, just to see what would happen. I damn near fell off the back of the bike, all I could do to just hold on. Thinking now, I believe that was the last time I rode a street bike. Way more bike than I was rider. Agreed. Too fast. Go get a sailboat, 'Hatin! But those that want to either build or ride such things... let 'em be... awright, bacq2 the shop-floor...

Yer bringin back some nice knee-draggin memories, Hatin'. I've never been more "in the now" than when drifting a bike on pavement. And staying upright, I mean. @Raz'r ... oh never mind. Just be you. Or go take some products through safety compliance testing, and we could talk about it in an informed way.